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Thursday, February 18, 2010

Global Weirding!

"The fact that it has snowed like crazy in Washington — while it has rained at the Winter Olympics in Canada, while Australia is having a record 13-year drought — is right in line with what every major study on climate change predicts: The weather will get weird; some areas will get more precipitation than ever; others will become drier than ever."

That quote is from Thomas Friedman, who, in a recent New York Times article, suggests ways to quiet the fears and untangle the confusion of the American people on global warming. Friedman attributes the confusion to constant berating and belittlement of the concept by certain politicians ("Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina tweeting that “it is going to keep snowing until Al Gore cries ‘uncle,’”) and others (see what Donald Trump said below). What's a person to believe? Read the rest of the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/opinion/17friedman.html?ref=opinion

Friedman prefers the term "Global Weirding," and I think he may be onto something well beyond the weather. Take the things coming out of Donald Trump's mouth, for example. He is so worried that China will gain a competitive business edge if the U.S. enforces scrubbers while China dilly dallies about getting its green act together, he'll say any old thing to head policy-makers off at the pass. Trump's statements that Washington, DC snow is proof against climate change, and cause for retracting Al Gore's Nobel Prize have been widely reported, but it's much more fun to check the actual transcript of the Neil Cavuto interview from which these tidbits were extracted: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,586403,00.html.

I wonder, Mr. Trump - if the earth shifts and the world as we know it turns topsy turvy because we all ignore global warming - what good will our competitive edge be to us?

My mother taught me to look inside a man - not to focus on the superficial. But just this once, Mom, please let me rub that ugly comb-over in his face. The things that come out of Trump's mouth are just as unkempt as the hair on his head. Global weirding, indeed!